{"id":132846,"date":"2017-11-05T10:39:17","date_gmt":"2017-11-05T15:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=132846"},"modified":"2020-11-16T09:13:19","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T14:13:19","slug":"bookshelf-tour-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=132846","title":{"rendered":"Bookshelf Tour #4"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\nPoetry<\/a> is important to me. My collection is small but each volume is loved, read, dipped into, used constantly as references. <\/p>\n

Six Centuries of Great Poetry: A Stunning Collection of Classic British Poems from Chaucer to Yeats<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, edited by Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine, is, in general, a crappy book with no notes, a one-page foreword, and no biographical information. HOWEVER, it’s very good for reference. You can find most of these poems online but I need to read them in books. I find it’s easier to read poetry in books. There’s a meditative space that happens, with the text kind of floating on the page, and … maybe it’s not having to have your finger on a Scroll button or something … that releases you from the present-day. Poetry for me is transportive. I have to be in the mood, that’s for sure. But it can also move me from one mood to the next. Books are way better for that. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had Aristotle’s Poetics<\/a>\"\"<\/i> since Freshman year in college. It’s how actors, at least actors who get BFAs, first learn about “stories,” and story structure. Important for any writer, I think, even if you are determined to break his rules. You might as well know what the rules are.<\/p>\n

I have the collected works of three favorites – W.H. Auden<\/a>\"\", William Blake<\/a>\"\" and Gerard Manley Hopkins<\/a>\"\". No matter what I do, Gerard Manley Hopkins reminds me of this guy<\/a>, no matter how I’ve tried to extricate them. This is why I caution everyone against love-at-first-sight. <\/p>\n

Ted Hughes\u2019 breathtaking and intimate collection Birthday Letters: Poems<\/a>\"\"<\/i>: all except two are addressed to his dead wife Sylvia Plath. The publication of this book was a seismic EVENT in the world of Plath lovers (and Hughes lovers, of which I am also one.). These are extraordinary and heartbreaking poems, published near his death, but he had been writing them over the decades. <\/p>\n

Carl Dennis is a contemporary fave, and his Practical Gods<\/a>\"\"<\/i><\/i> is wonderful.<\/p>\n

Irish poet Nuala N\u00ed Dhomhnaill only writes in the Irish language. She has said that she can\u2019t think poetically in English, the words do not come. I saw her read at the Ireland House on the NYU campus (wrote about her here<\/a>) and fell in love with her. Unfortunately, due to the fact that her poems are all in Irish, many are not widely-available due to the lack of translations (she has spoken and written eloquently about this problem). You have to just hope that translations will come out. The Water Horse<\/a>\"\"<\/i> is a wonderful volume with each poem printed in both Irish and English, on facing pages. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poetry is important to me. My collection is small but each volume is loved, read, dipped into, used constantly as references. Six Centuries of Great Poetry: A Stunning Collection of Classic British Poems from Chaucer to Yeats, edited by Robert … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[644,702,35,2629,160,88,607,168,252],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132846"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132846"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163273,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132846\/revisions\/163273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}